Here is a handy list compiled by someone in the blogosphere, though it only gives examples dating from 1982 to 2004.

http://midtopia.blogspot.com/2006/03/aclu-and-religious-liberty.html

But it is easy to find out more recent cases. As for older cases involving Christians, some of them have been the most landmark rulings on religious freedom in the 20th-century history of the US Supreme Court.

None of this should be a surprise.

What other faiths has the ACLU tried to muzzle? I recall they came to the defense of Islamic expressions of faith at some point, but do not recall an instance of them ever doing anything but try to prohibit Christian expression or promote other non-Christian religious beliefs. My recollection here may not be accurate, but I sure do get the impression that the ACLU is decidedly anti-Christian.

Also many of our founding fathers were “Masons” which philosophically found its way into the constitution, primarily the rights of “citizens” are primary and over-ride the rights of government institutions and state sponsored institutions to oppress people. The Masons of the 1770/80’s were extremely tolerant of other religious practices, and still are. The binding and common shared philosophy is one of “group” secrecy about political right and wrong to stop government oppression of the people, a belief in individual rights, shared experience and a code of personal conduct that frankly is universal if you look at the facts. It is the heart and soul of democracy, religion however if you look at historical doctrine is not democratic. Democracy and the constitutional concept of religious freedom, still cannot prevent a foreign force or group from totally dominating your society if it even has minor numbers (especially if it is a religious group, a gender group, a racial group or an ethnic group) that has both the greatest political and social strength in numbers of powerful relationships and control over money. Look at the unbalanced influence of radical Muslim terrorists to shape the governents of the regions they terrorize and control. As I said it only works in principle until the differences and group seperatism leads to conflict and war, then new borders are drawn if to look at the history of the thing. That’s why “Americans” came here and founded these borders to escape the religious practice of the government, but they all pretty much came from the same religion until recently. Now the sitiation is different and these same “groups” are attacking the “protestant” belief system that fled from the “catholic” state sponsered belief system. The constitution was not designed to deal with this new multi-religious, multi-cultural environment. In its inability to deal with this effectively, social engineers have emerged and some real nut bag philosophies and concepts have emerged to destroy and undermine the peace and stability of our society. The Romans and Greeks were destroyed for very similar historical reasons, invasion from cultural, non-homogenous religious groups (Celts, Persians, etc)

Besides, for many years, the ACLU did not exist, and Christians have long been to display Christianity in government without anything confronting them. The Constitution couldn’t be more clear on this, and despite this clarity, Christians continued doing this (e.g. school prayers, religious images in official government squares, etc.). Now that some are complaining, notice how more focus is placed on (in this case, religious) minorities as being the cause of this opposition rather than atheism and the ACLU. When I say focus, I am not referring to this blog in specific. I am talking about upset Christians in general.

Do I really care whether some politician invokes God or the Bible? No. I belong to a religious minority group, and it makes no difference to me that Christians do this, but I depise the anger that is directed towards us instead of those who have been chipping away at “Christian America” (remember it was an ATHEIST, not us, who fought prayer in school?).

PS: I know someone will raise a point about how the ACLU is targetting Christians specifically to the exclusion of others. Save your breath; I won’t fall for it. Just be sure to understand that if a religious minority overtakes Christianity in government presence, the ACLU will change its tune to reflect these changes, and fight that new religious majority.

You’ll be happy to know that I’ve had my say, and and I’m outta this thread. Ta ta!

Krutis, it’s clear that not everyone would like to see the same things that you would….thus, don’t you think that it reasonable for you to maintain that minute (or 30 seconds) of silence, and at the same time, allow those with differing opinions a minute (or 30 seconds) to verbalize, listen to and respond appropriately to the invocation? Sounds to me like quite a reasonable deal!

Now, as Sarah claims, if someone “forces” you to bow your head in the name of someone else’s religious beliefs, Christians would have a problem with that. Unfortunately, it seems to me that the real taaaadooooo here is intolerance of Christianity (the 90 %) “because I (the 10%) don’t believe in that way.”

Now that’s an individual speaking, clearly not the establishment of a state religion. Little rebel that I always was, if I’d been in that girl’s position, I’d have given the speech I intended anyway and I’d have said what they didn’t want me to say. Fortunately, I was never in that position and I’m happy for it. As it was, I graduated before political correctness was taken to its most ridiculous extremes. No one even read our graduation speeches before we gave them…

A government meeting is not a church choir meeting. I respect short invocations that are appropriate to the forum and I truly like them. I also think a moment of silence can be very appropriate. There are many forms of non-sectarian prayer. Military chaplains are great at it and are fine examples. Also, where I live, the invocation at public meetings is given by a different pastor or religious leader from the community each time - so far, I’ve wandered in on Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, Hispanic evangelical and Jewish rabbi-led invocations. And they were all pretty good.

I’m not condemning Jesus, nor anyone who believes and prays, however, I don’t see the connection between a city council meeting and religious activities. People on the council who believe, will act accordingly. Those who do NOT believe will still act in a way that they feel is right for them and for the city in question. If The Patriot believes that Jesus is the way; “the” way, that’s fine with me. Surely you don’t want to condemn those who don’t have that belief? We are good guys anyway. Trust me! Maybe there different ways to Nirvana, Utopia, Heaven …..

What I would like to see is one minute of silence before every political meeting; or at least 30 seconds, after the Pledge.

Please don’t take Scripture out of Context. You’ve taken those verses out of the context of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus was getting to the root of our problem - the evil desires of our heart. He was warning about showing “our righteousness” before men. At the same time he was telling us about the condition of the human heart and that it is sinful (self centered). Look at Matthew 5:21-28 for starters. In fact read the whole book of Matthew, you might learn something. Jesus Himself prayed publicly. Look at John chapter 17. The whole chapter is Jesus’ prayer for His disciples which He spoke in their presence publicly. Since we are about to celebrate Resurrection Sunday, look at John 11:41-46 which is Jesus’ public prayer when He raised Lazarus from the dead.

So Krusty are you condeming Jesus?

Then why have churches or synagogues?